Short Circuit (PG)

This 80s classic was my favourite film when I was about 6, and it's out on Blu-ray and DVD today!

Short Circuit (PG) (This review on FilmJuice.com)

Eighties cult classic Short Circuit is pure daft fun.  Packed with goofy American humour and anchored by a warm hearted moral about the universality of morality, the movie is a childhood favourite for many and sure to become one for generations to come.

‘Number Five’ begins existence as a lifeless robot, built to do the army’s bidding and act as a cutting edge military deterrent.  Suddenly lightening strikes (literally), flooding consciousness through his circuits and gifting him with a squeaky voice and instantaneous lust for life.  The now living machine sets off on a hyper-curious exploration of the world, initially oblivious to the panicking armed forces hot on his tail.

Newton Crosby is Number Five’s charming genius inventor, modestly portrayed by a subdued Steve Guttenburg, and Ben Jebituya is his stereotypical nerdy assistant-cum-sidekick, who is to prone to making arguably excessively racy jokes for a PG rated film.

The onscreen oestrogen and obligatory love interest comes in the shape of Stephanie Speck, an animal loving, UFO believing pseudo-hippy.  Her heart is won by Number Five’s malice-free nature, and they enjoy a dance in front of director John Badham’s own Saturday Night Fever, playing on the television. Ally Sheedy fills Speck’s character with no small measure of irresistibility, delivering a spritely and memorable performance in a film where for the most part the best actor is the robot.

Though patchy in quality, the script is nothing if not upbeat and much mirth is to be had from Number Five’s zany and surreal one-liners (“Hey, laser-lips, your mama was a snowblower”)!  Director John Badham’s life affirming mid-career effort is heavily indebted to Steven Spielberg's far superior E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, released four years previously.  Upon discovering Number Five outside her house, Speck even thinks he is an alien, and is delighted as he swiftly picks up human ways.  The film does however carve it’s own unique spot in eighties movie history, with an impressive character design crowned with ingeniously emotive ‘eyebrows’.

Anyone with at least one working eyeball will notice the plain-as-day similarities between Number Five and WALL-E, with their caterpillar perambulators and binocular optics.  Pixar’s Andrew Stanton stated that he ‘may have been subconsciously influenced’ by Short Circuit, presumably using the subconscious as a metaphor for tracing paper.  The bottom line of the matter is of course that Short Circuit came first, but WALL-E is the better film.

It won’t move your soul, unless you’re under five, and it won’t teach you anything new, unless you know less than a dead piece of metal, but Short Circuit is mostly harmless escapism fit for all the family (bar a few blue gags).  It’s worth a look, and the kids will love it.

Blu-ray & DVD extras: Commentary by director John Badham and writers S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock, Original theatrical trailer, ‘The Creation of Number 5’, Cast and crew interviews, Behind the scenes featurette

Life Is Beautiful (PG)

Italian modern classic Life Is Beautiful... out on Blu-ray Monday 2nd April!

Life Is Beautiful (PG) (This review on FilmJuice.com)

Life Is Beautiful, Roberto Benigni’s 1997 multi-Oscar winning triumph is a timeless modern fairytale. Set in 1930s Italy, Benigni plays the ingenious and good natured Guido. When the beautiful Dora (Nicoletta Braschi, Benigni’s wife) literally falls out of the sky and into his arms, Guido is instantly smitten. A series of gloriously fortunate events later the couple are married and have a son, and look likely to live happily ever after. However, after this uplifting opening the story takes a dark turn, as the Nazi’s whisk the young family off to a concentration camp. There Guido must use his vivid imagination to protect his wife and son from the surrounding horrors.

The first half of the film is crafted with such delightful creativity that the title seems beyond apt. Said title in fact originates from a quote by a holocaust survivor; a quote that helped to convince the filmmakers that it wasn’t inappropriate to make a comedy set during one of history’s darkest chapters.

Benigni’s slapstick combined with clever narrative contrivances make the opening hour fly by like a dream. The film’s tone then changes suddenly from a light and summery comedy, to a dark and harrowing recreation of the holocaust. This transition is jarring, perhaps deliberately so in order to contrast the graveness of the second half with the beauty of the first. With desperate heroism Guido maintains a ruse to his son that in fact they have gone to a holiday resort, where they must a play a game and win points. The implausibility of the story that seemed so appropriate earlier in the film, doesn’t quite work from this point onward. The filmmakers clearly realised this, because narration was added later to further explain that the story was intended as a fairytale.

All the contrivances, however brilliant, can’t help but add up to something of a predictable finale; a finale that highlights the one dimensionality of Guido as a character. But, the writing is such and the point of the story so obvious and noble, that these flaws can be overlooked.

The cast is uniformly fantastic, from Benigni’s heartwarming and Oscar winning central performance, to Giorgio Cantarini’s sublime debut as his little son. Interestingly, Cantarini went on to play the son of Maximus in Gladiator, likely giving him the finest filmography of any eight year old at the time! Nicoletta Braschi also shines as Guido’s devoted wife, playing her part perfectly in one of the most wonderfully touching romances ever seen on the silver screen.

The magic and warmth of Nicola Piovani’s unforgettable score makes it perhaps the most deserving of the film’s three Academy Awards, and the emotive cinematography by Tonino Delli Colli gives the film the feeling of a sumptuous classic.

Life Is Beautiful is an enchanting fable, and one of the most successful non-English language films to date. Uniquely poignant and full of joy, it firmly deserves its reputation as a must-see latter-day classic.

Blu-ray extras: Introduction by Martin Scorsese, Revisiting Life Is Beautiful - 15 years after featurette, Making of featurette, Trailer, B-roll.

The Golden Compass - 06/01/08 - **

Review of the Film The Golden Compass (PG).

Advanced warning: this review contains some plot spoilers.

The new film The Golden Compass has stirred up much controversy in Christian circles, mainly because of the apparently heretical series of books by Philip Pullman, the first novel of which this film is an adaptation of. It should be noted that I have not read these books, all though I have researched their general content. In this review I am not going to touch on the religious debate surrounding the story as in my opinion these issues have not translated from page to screen, and are therefore quite irrelevant.

To start with the film’s good points then, much of the acting is excellent; in particular the performances of Daniel Craig, Nicole Kidman and Eva Green stand out. Disappointingly though they are all underused, barely scraping about twenty-five minutes of screen time between them of the films near two hour running time. But it has to be said that in their own little parts they each stand-out, giving a sincere face to characters who otherwise it would be difficult to take seriously.

The special effects are consistently brilliant, highlights being the well rendered talking polar bears, some sweeping scenery of icy landscapes and highly imaginative cityscapes. Combined with an above average music score for a Hollywood film, there are moments that should not fail to send freezing shivers of cinematic magic down even the most cynical of spines.

Unfortunately that is already the end of the good points, and so now we move on to the more numerous and complex bad points.

Firstly, the young leading actress Dakota Blue Richards really isn’t up to the task in this, her first ever screen role. She frequently stumbles on difficult dialogue, and the part definitely required a more skilled and experienced performer who could portray the main character more naturally, and stimulate more empathy for her. While Richards isn’t dreadful, she simply isn’t good enough for a film like this.

In relation to the story, to me the film doesn’t have much of one at all. There is something about some mysterious ‘dust’, parallel universes and a quest to find some lost children… but in the end the film doesn’t make it very easy to figure out. The purpose and importance of the object to which the title of the film refers is itself rather vague and difficult to understand, and when a film cannot even make sense of it’s own title then you know that it’s in trouble! Chris Weitz, who both wrote the adapted screenplay for and directed the film really has missed a golden opportunity to make a terrific, epic cinematic experience, if all of the accolades that the books have garnered are to be believed. He has made a film that is a baffling mix of cinematic magic and meaningless content… like putting icing on a stale cake.

As the film was specifically billed by New Line Cinema as the successor to The Lord of the Rings series, I am going to compare the two. One of Weitz’s main short fallings in the quality of this film is that he failed to instil a sense of epic scale. Peter Jackson did a fine job of this in his films, and it really does make a huge difference for a story of this kind. The Golden Compass has too much switching between locations with little sense of the journey between, and too many rotating aerial shots that are blatantly trying to emulate those in The Lord of the Rings, which combine to create something that feels strangely small and insignificant. The budget of this film was almost two thirds of that of Jackson’s entire trilogy, which just seems criminal! It’s performance at the box office has been rather mediocre, and because of that there is doubt as to whether the sequels will go ahead at all.

All religious kafuffle aside, this film is quite a let down. It is up to you though to decide whether or not it’s worth seeing, and if you are a fan of the books then you’ll probably want to find out for yourself what it’s like. But bring some tissues. There there… the next one might be better, if it even gets made.

Rating : **

Written by,

.Peter.D.Marsay.

Originally completed: 06/01/08.